Ketsui DS (w/ superplay DVD)

[MrMonkeyMan]

By the way, how long is the Extra stage? Is is comparable to the PCB stage in length and enemy-wise? And I guess scoring in that mode will be more similar to the PCB version, right? I?m glad this mode has fixed lives so scoring actually makes sense there (same as in DOOM mode). And here having a regular shot will finally make sense as it can be safely ignored in the other modes, which is a bit sad.

It's most of stage 5.  You go up to and through the reverse scrolling section.  After that you face doom in the reverse scrolling section, only this time it scrolls properly.

[adverse]

Have you guys gotten a staff roll yet?  Mihara says it's somewhere in the game but it's secret.

Looks like Mihara's going to be hosting a score competition on his blog next week too.

A couple things people probably have noticed: at the ship select screen if you hit left or right you can select the color of your craft.

Also, if you laser normal enemies on the ship stage, they count like destroyed part (i.e. multiplier x their value), but for each one you destroy the multiplier goes down.

[EOJ]

There's a staff roll at the end of Death Label, but it's the arcade staff roll. Are you talking about the DS version credits? I haven't seen those yet. Maybe at the end of Doom or Extra.

[MrMonkeyMan]

Also, if you laser normal enemies on the ship stage, they count like destroyed part (i.e. multiplier x their value), but for each one you destroy the multiplier goes down.

This is true for everything in the game, even finishing off bosses will lower your multiplier.

[adverse]

Finally beat Death Label.  Not quite as easy as EOJ says 

Extra mode is fun though.

And this game really is a complete package.  Kudos to Mihara!

[adverse]

Ooh, list of achievements here if you wanna spoil it:

http://wikiwiki.jp/ketui/?%A5%B1%A5%C4%A5%A4%A5%C7%A5%B9%A5%EC%A1%BC%A5%D9%A5%EB

[EOJ]

I posted that link a few days ago in this thread.

[adverse]

Sorry about that.

Two random easter eggs: hold A when you select "special" from the menu to see a new monster.

When fighting Cinderella in any mode, her 1st form can be skipped by pressing L and R apparently.  (Apparently a programming glitch)

[Kaneda]

I also have to LOL at the people complaining about how this is just a "boss rush demo", and it "isn't worth the money". Here's what you get for your $48 (that's the price I paid from Play-asia. Anyone can get it at that price after you find a $10 off coupon online. Just google it):

Christ, I'm getting so sick of that one obnoxious guy on shmups who can't get it through his head that A) we know it's not the full game and B) we like it anyways.

That guy's a fucking zero. Trying to get a rise out of people on the internet over something like that just screams "my life sucks".

This game is great. I've been playing it a ton since I got it yesterday and will continue to do so at work when I have free time (which is often). Well done, Mihara. The Ask-IKD thing with all of the animated segments starring IKD and Mihara is a little gay though. I appreciate the effort though and hope he does something similar for Mushi Futari.

[FrederikJurk]

Yeah, but I beat Death Label in a couple hours thanks to the increasing lives (I think I had 17 when I beat it). Not a very satisfying achievement. It would improve the longevity of the game if the challenge was a bit stiffer. Just about anyone can beat Death Label with the max 20 lives if you manage your bombs properly. But if the max lives were cut down to 1/2 or 1/3 of that, it would take much longer, and not everyone would be able to do it. This would pattern better with the difficulty of the Ketsui PCB.

I agree, but in my case I just want to unlock the Extra mode as quickly as possible and tackle the Death Label mode when I?m skilled enough for it. That?s the problems with unlockable content in general: Sometimes you don?t really WANT to go through the content that unlocks the next one. That?s why I?m glad I don?t have to come up with the pro skills to unlock a complete stage, even if it?s the same mechanism that breaks most of the rest of the game a bit.

Also, I didn?t really look into the scoring enough, but in what way does the life increase actually affect the scoring? I?m guessing with the "lifes remaining" bonus, but is suiciding for three new bombs to milk big bullet patterns for red boxes really worth it? In any case it?s a bit frustrating since I really like the scoring with it?s close combat reward and tactical bullet bombing...

By the way, how long is the Extra stage? Is is comparable to the PCB stage in length and enemy-wise? And I guess scoring in that mode will be more similar to the PCB version, right? I?m glad this mode has fixed lives so scoring actually makes sense there (same as in DOOM mode). And here having a regular shot will finally make sense as it can be safely ignored in the other modes, which is a bit sad.

It's most of stage 5.  You go up to and through the reverse scrolling section.  After that you face doom in the reverse scrolling section, only this time it scrolls properly.

Wow, nice! I can?t unlock it yet because I?m still waiting for my actual copy to arrive, and the copy I (*cough cough*) lent from my uncle who works at Arika keeps crashing in Death Label mode after a couple of bosses. Which isn?t so bad actually because it still gives me something to look forward to 

at the ship select screen if you hit left or right you can select the color of your craft.

Haha, awesome. I know it doesn?t actually have any impact on the game, but I?m always very entertained by little details like that. 

[MrMonkeyMan]

Also, I didn?t really look into the scoring enough, but in what way does the life increase actually affect the scoring? I?m guessing with the "lifes remaining" bonus, but is suiciding for three new bombs to milk big bullet patterns for red boxes really worth it? In any case it?s a bit frustrating since I really like the scoring with it?s close combat reward and tactical bullet bombing...

Your bonus at the end of each stage will be where the majority of you points will come from.  With 19 lives your end bonus is your multiplier x 9500 points.  There is no enemy that is worth that many points in the game.  Black Draft is worth 5300 points when you destroy him, the first health segment of Trafalgar is worth 6200 points, and Doom is worth 5000 points.

Also, people might not realize this, but the bosses from Ketsui are barely worth any points and you really don't want to be destroying them, or any parts of them with your lock shot.  The midbosses are where the points are at.

I grabbed these numbers from the art book that came with the insanity DVD, but it doesn't appear they've changed for this game.

[rtw]

When fighting Cinderella in any mode, her 1st form can be skipped by pressing L and R apparently.  (Apparently a programming glitch)

Anyone have any tips on how to avoid the bullets when the "orange ball" is sent to the top of the screen and you get a lot of shots downwards and at the same time a shower of red balls starts coming up from below ?

rtw

[MrMonkeyMan]

Move up the screen, and lock on to the orange ball.  You only need to dodge the bullets from the orange ball, just make sure to stay above the other bullets.

[FrederikJurk]

Bonus info for rtw: As soon as you destroy the ball this form will end, which is much quicker than keeping the shots locked on the boss itself.

It?s nice that you can also save Training mode replays (I somehow automatically assumed that I wouldn?t). I catch myself quite often doing overly
risky or cool looking things "for the camera"  It?s also a much more valuable feature than I originally thought - watching yourself play again can
really highlight things a lot better than during the heat of the actual run.

One thing that is a bit sad, though, is that the first boss (from the PCB version) dies so quickly that it never gets to release its nice swirly patterns. I saw this purely by accident while fooling around a bit. Maybe that would be nice for a no-shooting clear 

[drboom]

Just got my copy today from GP (thanks!) and I have been playing on and off all afternoon. Fantastic game. I have come close to beating very hard a few times with 8 and then 9 lives, but have to do some work tonight to beat it.
MMM: when you say the bosses don't give you much, do you just use your shot, rather than lock shot and milk them for as many chips as possible?

[MrMonkeyMan]

MMM: when you say the bosses don't give you much, do you just use your shot, rather than lock shot and milk them for as many chips as possible?

You can use your lock shot on them for the 5 chips, but when you deal that last blow you should switch to the normal shot.  This applies to every section of their life bar.

Bosses are only worth 500-900 points so it's not worth the drop in your multiplier.  Midbosses are all worth at least 2000 points.

[adverse]

I agree, but in my case I just want to unlock the Extra mode as quickly as possible and tackle the Death Label mode when I?m skilled enough for it. That?s the problems with unlockable content in general: Sometimes you don?t really WANT to go through the content that unlocks the next one. That?s why I?m glad I don?t have to come up with the pro skills to unlock a complete stage, even if it?s the same mechanism that breaks most of the rest of the game a bit.

Yeah I sympathize with you here.  I imagine there is some time constraint or other condition that may allow you to unlock extra mode for those who can't clear death label.  Still, although death label is really hard, it should be doable given that you can skip over Cinderella's first form.  I was often wasting a life or two and a couple bombs on that alone.

GaijinPunch, what is your impression of how this game is selling?  According to Mihara it sold out on Amazon and is sold out in all but one shop in Akihabara.  Haven't seen it promoted much around Nipponbashi, but that could be because it sold out.

[zakk]

btw, I'm glad to see that the answer to 'where do the extra points in the first loop come from?' question is just 'everywhere'

[gsl]

I like how Yurik Steele keeps referring to Ikeda as 'aniki' in the IKD-san section.

[FrederikJurk]

MMM: when you say the bosses don't give you much, do you just use your shot, rather than lock shot and milk them for as many chips as possible?

You can use your lock shot on them for the 5 chips, but when you deal that last blow you should switch to the normal shot.  This applies to every section of their life bar.

Bosses are only worth 500-900 points so it's not worth the drop in your multiplier.  Midbosses are all worth at least 2000 points.

Heh, that?s interesting and something I would never have figured out myself. I wish the score calculation was a bit more transparent, adding a small end-game score table perhaps. Now it seems the shot actually serves a purpose on the regular courses 

GaijinPunch, what is your impression of how this game is selling?  According to Mihara it sold out on Amazon and is sold out in all but one shop in Akihabara.  Haven't seen it promoted much around Nipponbashi, but that could be because it sold out.

[rtw]

Move up the screen, and lock on to the orange ball.  You only need to dodge the bullets from the orange ball, just make sure to stay above the other bullets.

Thank you MrMonkeyMan & FredrikJurk for your tips I'm getting the hang of it now, only need to decide on how to best dodge the blue pattern.

rtw

[SuperPang]

According to Mihara it sold out on Amazon and is sold out in all but one shop in Akihabara.  Haven't seen it promoted much around Nipponbashi, but that could be because it sold out.

Good news.

I get the feeling Cave/Arika/.5pb are finally waking up to the export demand lately as well. Talk of console localization for the first time, no doubt impressive Play Asia figures for Ketsui DL and various merch. Import shops got their Ketsui's in pretty quickly too.

[Kaneda]

I bought my copy in Akiba but the first store I checked was sold out. The store I got it at had several and the store next to it had some as well, but I suppose they could've sold by the end of the weekend. At any rate, I hope the game does well.

[gsl]

So Death Label mode is pretty impossible.  I shed most of my lives on Sphinx and Jamadhar, where the only way to easily deplete the boss' life bar is by destroying every single gun on the bosses themselves, which put up a good fight of sudden and mostly undodgeable attacks.  Particularly bullshit are the ones that require you to squeeze inbetween a wall of large pink bullets, hoping your ship is in that mysterious part of the bullet that, for some reason doesn't register as a hit.  Cinderella Amber (the orange "option") and Blackdraft (the small enemies that explode in a shower of pink shots) are especially frustrating as they present several high-speed patterns that you're forced to react to in within a tiny portion of the screen in a fraction of a second.  To get anywhere, you basically have to bomb-spam through most of the impossible parts and hope your shield (which seems to vary the time it stays effective; either that or I'm *always* unlucky enough to be sitting on top of a bullet when it goes off) holds through some of the less impossible parts.

If I'm somehow completely missing some vital bit of strategy I'd love to know.  Training mode would have been nice with some kind of slowdown option to allow you to learn how to navigate some of the worse patterns.

[seiatsu]

Yeah, I'm having some trouble with DL mode too. The good news is very hard mode is a breeze after playing DL mode a while.

[adverse]

Death Label is pretty goddamn hard.  I actually saved my replay clearing it so if I had a way to upload it I would...

But here's how to beat Sphinx with one life: Start on the left leg, lock on.  The pink bullet lines will come down, jump from larger gap to larger gap as much as you can.  After about three dodges you should destroy the left leg.  Right leg, pound away on and dodge the extremely close range bullets.  Then go for the upper right section.  In my case I just hammered it with lock on until it exploded, cancelling some of the homing bullets.  Do the same for the left.  Use bombs on the homing red triangle bullet swarms unless you're sure you can dodge them.  Once you've beaten the first form, get to the bottom of the screen for the really tight blue triangle bullet pattern, dodge in the gaps.  Then use regular shot to dodge away from the quick bullet fans that will come down from the top.  Lock onto the head and get to the far right to bomb through the blue bullet explosion and dodge as much as of the second batch as you can.  You won't be able to dodge all of it but there should be a little hole to dodge through.  Be careful though because as soon as the second wave ends the triangle pattern begins again really quick.

[rtw]

Two questions this early very snowy morning

Is "doom mode" always two loops with 3 ships, or is there a way to increase ship count ?

How do you unlock "death label" mode 

rtw

[EOJ]

In Doom mode you always start with 3 lives, there's no way to increase that. However, you do get one extra life after every doom you beat. There are 5 dooms.

For Death Label, I think you just have to get to a certain stage in one of the hard or very hard courses. I don't know really, it just unlocked for me after about an hour or so with the game.

Haven't played this much since the weekend, and I don't foresee myself playing it much in the future due to it giving me nasty eyestrain headaches and sore hands.
I didn't play enough to max out the lives in any of the modes.

[rtw]

In Doom mode you always start with 3 lives, there's no way to increase that. However, you do get one extra life after every doom you beat. There are 5 dooms.

For Death Label, I think you just have to get to a certain stage in one of the hard or very hard courses. I don't know really, it just unlocked for me after about an hour or so with the game.

Thank you EOJ! So I assume the death label will appear inbetween "very hard" and "doom mode" ?

I can't play too much either, I have long fingers and holding the NDS for large amounts of time gives me sore hands.

One thing though, this game makes me love my Ketsui PCB even more

rtw

[MX7]

Have you cleared or maxed out the lives on Very Hard yet? I seem to remember something like that unlocking Death Label on my card. A lot of this game is still a mystery to me 

I'm really enjoying Death Label at the moment. I love the fact that all the patterns can be dodged with some (a lot) of practice. I think this is the real jewl in the crown for me, as far as my Ketsui Death Label experience has gone so far